We Love Punk Basements: An Interview With Montreal’s Drowning In Blood
By Staff | March 28, 2026
Photo credit: Nikolai Sidorov
Drowning In Blood is a Montreal-based metal quartet comprised of Christophe Michaud (vocals/guitar), Justin Boisvert (guitar), Nicolas Tremblay (bass/backing vocals), and Noah Muller (drums). Immersed in their city's legendary metal and hardcore scenes, the group has forged a unique crossover sound that blends aggressive thrash with raw, diverse musical influences. Their professional trajectory is rapidly ascending; the band recently undertook an ambitious, self-managed tour across the United States—a feat involving complex visa logistics and significant personal financial investment. Their creative process typically prioritizes visceral instrumentation over lyrics, though their debut EP, You’ve Won… But At What Cost?, successfully explores a cohesive narrative arc centered on revolution. Whether they are sharing the stage with modern thrash titans like Havok or preparing new material that balances melodic death metal with old-school intensity, the band maintains a tight-knit, brotherly bond fueled by a party atmosphere on the road (as you’ll see) and a deep appreciation for their dedicated fans.
You have almost 30 upcoming dates in the US, that's a pretty serious run for any band, let alone an unsigned one. What was the biggest hurdle in booking a tour of this scale yourself, and how are you prepping for that much time on the road?
Chris Michaud, guitar/vocals: The biggest hurdle was dealing with the visa shit. It’s really complicated and expensive for Canadian bands to play the US because we need to get a work visa and it has proven to be quite the task and it has taken a lot of my time. That being said, we are really excited to go on the road and play in front of our US fans for the first time. Judging by our Spotify metrics, aside from Canada, the US is the country where we have the most fans so, we felt like we had to go. Hopefully by the time you read these lines, our visa will be approved and the stress will go away lol. As for prepping, the biggest item on the list is money. Unfortunately, touring is really expensive, so we have to save up our money.
Nick Tremblay, bass/backing vocals: Generally, Chris takes care of most our booking. So when he almost finished booking the Western leg of the tour, I noticed how drained he was and I stepped in to help him. Since we manage ourselves, we had to reach out to every booker and band we could (some more reliable than others haha, so a few shows we had to remove because of that). Aside from the outreach, applying for a visa is quite the task (Chris can tell you more about it)!
Montreal has a legendary reputation for death metal and hardcore. How does being immersed in that specific scene influence the crossover element of your sound? Do you feel more at home in the punk basements or the metal clubs?
DIB: We love punk basements!
Chris: It does have a legendary reputation for death and hardcore, so naturally yeah, we incorporated a lot of death and hardcore elements to our songwriting which wasn’t that hard since we fucking love both genres and play a lot of gigs with those bands. Being immersed in that specific death-hardcore scene gives us an element of uniqueness in the local scene I find. But yeah it heavily influenced our sound.
Justin Bolsvert, guitar: We love punk basements, it’s where we feel the most at home. People go fucking crazy in there, and since they get a lot of punk, playing more of that aggressive raw crossover thrash shit really gets an awesome reaction. Sometimes they will see a thrash band on the bill and be like “meh’’, but we usually win them over pretty quickly.
Nick: I think that being in a scene with these genres influences us to add some elements of these genres in the sound we make, but also to make it our own.
Photo credit: Janna Toubal
You’ve mentioned that "You’ve Won… But At What Cost?" follows the arc of a revolution. When you’re writing a conceptual EP like that, does the theme dictate the riffs, or do you find yourself fitting the narrative to what you've already captured in the jam room?
Chris: I feel like when we have 2-3 songs that are fully written and ready to go, we always manage to find a common theme between them. And then once we find that theme, we discuss it. How do we feel about that topic? What do we wanna talk about here specifically? Which angles do we want to take? And then we just basically write lyrics about stuff that makes us mad, stuff that we read either in the news or in history in general. But usually the music comes first, and then the lyrics. We start with a riff that we like, a riff that sounds cool. And then, we sorta go from there.
Noah Muller, drums: It’s hard to say, because we always have a different process when starting to write a song. Sometimes it’s a lyric or a title that gives us the direction or how a riff sounds and what they make us feel. That’s what music is about.
Nick: We sometimes come up with titles pre-written, just to have a direction but lyrics are mostly written last. Whether we’re on tour, at the space or at home, we write stuff we like to hear and that pleases us musically. We’re working on adding some more complexity to our sound without altering it to the point we don’t recognize our sound.
Photo credit: Nikolai Sidorov
Sharing the stage with Havok is a pretty special moment for most modern thrashers. Did watching their tightness or stage setup that night change anything about how Drowning In Blood approaches your own live performance?
Chris: Honestly, I’ve seen Havok multiple times in my life so, I already knew they were tight and professional. Really loved getting to meet them however, they gave us a lot of valuable advice.
Noah: It showed us what to do (and continue doing) in our performances. We’re doing pretty good in terms of intensity but we want to unleash our full potential.
Nick: It was my second time seeing them and they did not disappoint! Along with Warbringer, Toxic Holocaust and Hexen, they are key modern thrash inspirations of ours. Meeting the Havok guys made me realize that staying humble and being the nicest outside the stage is what will keep your fans loyal.You gotta give a strong positive energy on and off the stage while staying intense and brutal.
You have a live album on the horizon. Some bands use live records as a "best of" album, while others want to capture the raw energy that gets lost in the studio. What was the driving force behind wanting to put out a live release right now?
Chris: Since we’re about to tour, we felt a new release helps us staying relevant, but also gives people a taste of what we’re all about before they get to see us. But yeah, it was mostly about capturing that raw live energy, which we feel is hard to capture in the studio with all the pressure.
Justin: It shows the crowd the aggression and intensity we give in our live performances. Basically a sneak peek into what we are about.
Nick: We wanted to immortalize our first show we played in the area where the show was recorded. As soon as we knew that was a possibility we took it! I won’t say where the show was, but the cover our friend and artist Derek Désaillier (@desdghost on Instagram) designed based on our crazy ideas is phenomenal and very comedic. We can’t wait to unveil it!
The band in Halifax. Photo credit: random fan
The leap from EP to a full-length LP is a big milestone. Since you're currently in the writing phase, are you leaning more into the melodic death influences you started with, or is the new material stripping things back to a more primitive, old-school thrash vibe?
Chris: I mean, we’re definitely keeping our doors open, we don’t really limit ourselves. We do a little bit of both, and sometimes both at the same time. Really what drives us is just writing stuff we like and we don’t really follow guidelines. I feel that in a way, it’s what makes us unique. I love the fact that people find it hard to put us in a category sometimes lol.
Justin: It goes both ways, sometimes we include the melodic elements and we’ll blend it with pure old school thrash that gives it that raw and angry sound.
Nick: We are defining our identity as a band and trying to mix what we like. We’re like brothers, we write songs we like and we hope people will get to enjoy the EP as much as we do!
Rage of Armageddon in Brooklyn is a pretty cool festival. For the New York crowd who might be seeing you for the first time on September 12, which song in your current setlist do you think best defines the Drowning In Blood vibe?
DIB: Whichever ones they like haha. We’d say Crush The Weak! We find that it comprises all the elements that people should be aware of in our sound. We also really love to play “You’ve Won… But At What Cost’’ live because we feel it really captures all the different elements that we bring to the table.
Photo credit: Janna Toubal
You've mentioned that your music has hints of Satan. How do you balance those darker, occult themes with the more socio-political themes found in your lyrics? Do they ever clash, or do they come from the same place of frustration? (I honestly don’t remember mentioning the occult lmao what is this question)
DIB: If you’re referring to the bio on our website, it’s a little silly joke we did back then haha. We were making the website and I felt that ‘’hints of Satan’’ sounded funny. We don’t really talk about the occult that much, but we’re not opposed to it. We have some elements of black metal, but more on instrumental side. We don’t really find that it clashes that much. Jokes aside, we don’t limit ourselves lyrically, we talk about what we want to talk about. There’s almost no topic we avoid discussing.
Last summer was Europe and this winter was the Canadian West Coast, this summer is the US. After spending weeks cramped in a rental together, what’s the one thing—besides the gear obviously—that is non-negotiable for the tour trailer this time around?
Chris: Honestly, this is gonna sound cliche, but beer and liquor is absolutely mandatory in the Fuck-Truck hahaha. Every day is a party when we are on the road. We’re not making any money out of this, so it’s like a vacation for us. I feel like treating it as such makes it way easier to go weeks on end without feeling too much like it’s a job, even though it is. It also brings us a lot closer together and makes it harder to get into dumb fights about bullshit. We’re all brothers and we just love hanging out together (Awwwww haha).
Nick: For the Fuck-Truck (yes that’s what we call all the vans we rent haha), we need more snacks (I’m always hungry lol). That’s it lol.
Anyone you'd like to shout out for their support - friends, family, other bands?
DIB: We’d like to shout out these bands: Divine Bloodline, Stregoneria, Exorcist, Zero Tolerance, Vuicide, Wodos, Consuming Misery, Retaliation, Dynasty, Chaos Wasteland, Last Dance Among Wolves, Postluven, Mutank, Musitric, Havok, Lich King, Hatriot, Nervosa, Battlecreek, Bomber, Mourning High, Tales of Blood, Abolition, The Exploited, Dayglo Abortions, Artillery, Razor, Aggression, Coven 6669, Torrefy, Axident, Soul-X, Invicta, Raider, Havamal, Dead Knowledge and Rotting Empire.
Chris: I wanna give a quick shoutout to my parents, mostly. They have been supporting us from the very beginning, and I feel that it has contributed greatly to our success. I also wanna give a quick shoutout to our Montreal fans who always come around to shows to buy us a beer and a shirt. They are the most dedicated fans in the world, and the fact that they buy something EVERY SINGLE TIME we have new merch items really helps us moving forward. Finally, I wanna give a shoutout to my girlfriend, who has been supporting me through this long visa process. She always had the right words and helped me deal with the stress from all of it. I’m really grateful that she truly cared, and always made me feel like everything was gonna be okay.
Noah and Justin: Shout out to our girlfriends, family and friends!
Nick: Shout out to my girlfriend, my family and friends (even the non-metalheads!) who support us greatly. I want to thank the bookers, the soundpersons, the techs, the photographers, the artists, the radio-hosts, and the bands we’ve met on the road and most importantly the fans, since we couldn’t do any of this without them.
Band links
Website: https://www.drowninginblood.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drowninginblood.band?igsh=dDMwOWZkdDh1dnBv
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BLFdGGF23/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Bandcamp: https://drowninginblood.bandcamp.com/album/youve-won-but-at-what-cost
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7uhtMTBJzzEbg0cLVXIKdR?si=w3gI_xABSCK7vSdh3Wc1vg